The Speed of Light Read online

  'Shit, yeah,' said Laura. 'That's right: that nutcase Rodney.'

  Borgheson didn't remember him, but Laura and I helped to remind him.

  'Of course,' he finally said. 'Falk. Rodney Falk. The big guy who'd been in Vietnam. I'd completely forgotten him. He was from around here somewhere, Decatur or somewhere like that, wasn't he?' I didn't say anything, and Borgheson went on, 'Of course I remember. But I didn'thave much to do with him. You don't mean to say you were friends?'

  'We shared an office for a semester,' I answered evasively. 'Then he disappeared.'

  'Oh, come on now,' Laura burst in, draping herself over my shoulder. 'But the two of you were always conspiring together in Treno's like you were in the CIA. I always wondered what you spent so much time talking about.'

  'Nothing,' I said. 'Books.'

  'Books?' said Laura.

  'He was a strange fellow,' Borgheson intervened, addressing Vinas and the teaching assistant, who were following the conversation looking like they were actually interested. 'He looked like a typical redneck, a boor, and then he never did give the impression of having his head screwed on entirely right. But he was a very cultured guy, extremely well-read. Or at least that's what Dan Gleylock, who actually was friends with him, said. Do you remember Gleylock?'

  'But how could he not remember?' Laura answered for me. 'I don't know about you, but I've never met anyone else who could speak seventeen Amerindian languages. You know, John, I always thought, if Martians landed on Earth, we'd have at least one way of making sure whether they were Martians or not: send them to Gleylock and if he doesn't understand them, they're Martians alright.'

  Borgheson, Vinas and the teaching assistant laughed.

  'He retired two years ago,' Borgheson continued. 'He lives in Florida now, every once in a while I get an email from him . . . As for Falk, the truth is I haven't heard a single word about him.'

  The party ended about nine, but Laura and I went to have a drink by ourselves before she headed back to St Louis. She took me to The Embassy, a small bar, dark and narrow, the walls and floors covered in wood, located beside Lincoln Square, and as soon as we sat at the bar, facing a mirror that reflected the quiet atmosphere of the place, I remembered that a scene in my novel set in Urbana took place in that bar. As we ordered our drinks I told Laura.

  'Obviously,' she smiled. 'Why do you think I brought you here?'

  We stayed in The Embassy talking until very late. We talked a bit about everything, including, as if they were alive, about my wife and my son. But what I most remember about that conversation is the end of it, perhaps because at that moment, for the first time, I had the deceptive intuition that the past is not a stable place but changeable, permanently altered by the future, and that therefore none of what had already happened was irreversible. We'd asked for the bill when, not like someone summing up the evening but like someone offering a nonchalant comment, Laura said that success agreed with me.

  'Why should it disagree with me?' I asked, and immediately, automatically said what I'd said every time, over the last two years, someone had made that same mistake:'Successful writers say that the ideal condition for a writer is failure. Believe me: don't believe them. There's nothing better than success.'

  And then, as I also always did, I quoted the French writer Jules Renard's phrase, with which Marcos had shut up a classmate at the Faculty of Fine Arts: 'Yes, I know. All great men were ignored in their lifetimes; but I'm not a great man, so I'd prefer immediate renown.'

  Laura laughed.

  'No doubt about it,' she said. 'It agrees with you. But whatever you say, it's rare. Look at my second husband. The fucking gringo made a mint doing what he enjoys doing, but he never stops complaining about the slavery of success, this, that and the other. Bullshit. At least those of us who fail don't waste time trying everyone else's fucking patience with our failure.'

  With deliberate naivete I asked:

  'You've failed?'

  Her lips curved into a scathing smile.'

  Of course not,' she said in an ambiguous tone, halfway between aggressive and reassuring. 'It was just a manner of speaking. We all know only idiots fail. But tell me something: what do you call having thrown two marriages overboard, being all alone in the world, forty years old and not even having forged a decent academic career?' She paused and, since I didn't respond, went on harshly, 'Anyway, let's drop the subject . . . What are you going to do tomorrow?'

  The waiter came over with the bill.

  'Nothing,' I lied as I paid, shrugging my shoulders. 'Take a walk around here. See the city.'

  'Good idea,' said Laura. 'You know something? I have the impression that in the two years you spent in Urbana you didn't see anything, didn't understand a thing. The truth is, kiddo, it seemed like you had blinkers on.'

  Laura sat there for a moment looking at me as if she hadn't just spoken, as if she was hesitating or as if she was going to apologize for her words, but then she put her glass down on the bar, stroked my cheek, kissed me on the lips, smiled gently as she leaned back from the kiss, and repeated in a low voice:

  'Not a thing.'

  I sat there in silence, perplexed. Laura picked her glass up again and finished off her drink in one swallow.

  'Don't worry, kid,' she said then, going back to her usual tone of voice. 'I'm not going to ask you to go to bed with me, I'm a bit grown-up now to get the brush-off from a jerk like you, but at least do me the favour of wiping that fucking stunned look off your face . . . So, shall we go?'

  Laura gave me a lift to the Chancellor, and when she pulled up outside the door I suggested we have one last drink in the hotel bar; as soon as I pronounced those words I thought of Patricia, Marcos' wife, and regretted the suggestion: more than an insinuation, it seemed like a pathetic attempt at making amends, a consoling pat on the back. Laura shook her head.

  'Better not,' she said, barely smiling. 'It's very late and I've still got a two-hour drive ahead of me.'

  We hugged and, as we did, for an instant I felt a stab of anticipated nostalgia, because I sensed that was the last time I was going to see Laura, and I sensed that she sensed it too.

  'I'm very glad to've seen you,' she said when I opened the car door. 'I'm glad you're well. Who knows: maybe I'llget to Barcelona one of these days, I'd like to meet your wife and son.'

  Not yet all the way out of the car I looked her in the eye and thought of saying: 'They're both dead, Laura. I killed them.'

  'Sure, Laura,' was what I actually said. 'Come whenever you want. They'd love to meet you.'

  Then I closed the door and went into the hotel without turning around to watch her go.

  The next day I woke up not knowing where I was, but that feeling only lasted a few seconds and, after reconciling myself to the astonishing fact that I was back in Urbana, while I was showering I decided to turn the lie I'd told Laura in The Embassy into truth and postpone until midday my visit to Rodney in Rantoul. So after having breakfast in the Chancellor I started walking downtown. It was Sunday, the streets were almost deserted and at first they all seemed vaguely familiar, but after just a few minutes I was already lost and I couldn't help but think that maybe Laura was right and I had spent those two years in Urbana with blinkers on, like a ghost or a zombie wandering among that population of ghosts and zombies. I had to stop a jogger who was listening to a Walkman to ask him to tell me how to get to campus; when I finally came out onto Green Street, by following his directions, I got my bearings. That was how, just as if I were following the shadow of the cheerful, fearsome, arrogant kamikaze I'd been in Urbana, I saw the Quad, the Foreign Languages Building, my old house at 703 West Oregon, Treno's. It was all more or less as I'd remembered it, except Treno's, converted into one of those interchangeable cafes that American snobs consider European (from Rome) and European snobs consider American (from New York), but which are impossible to find in either New York or Rome. I went in, ordered a Coke at the bar and, watching the sunny morning through the big windows
that gave onto Goodwin, I drank a couple of sips. Then I paid and left.

  At the front desk in the Chancellor they'd told me where there was a car rental agency that was open on Sundays. I rented a Chrysler there, checked my route with the guy behind the counter to make sure I remembered the way, and half an hour later, after following the same route I'dtravelled fifteen years before to see Rodney's father (up Broadway and across Cunningham Avenue and then the highway north), I arrived in Rantoul. As soon as I got into the city I recognized the intersection of Liberty Drive and Century Boulevard, and also the gas station, which was now called Casey's General Store and had been refurbished with modern gas pumps and expanded with a supermarket and cafeteria. Since I wasn't sure of being able to find Rodney'shouse, I stopped the car there, went into the cafeteria and asked where Belle Avenue was; a fat waitress in a white uniform and cap shouted some directions at me without pausing from attending her customers. I went back to the car, tried to follow the waitress's directions and, just when I thought I was lost again, saw the railway tracks and suddenly knew where I was. I backed up, turned right, passed the closed door of Bud's Bar and soon I was parked in front of Rodney's house. It didn't look much different than it had fifteen years ago, although its size and the slightly faded elegance of an old country mansion contrasted even more than in my memory with the blandly functional neighbouring buildings. Rodney had no doubt renovated it for his family, because the fagade and the porch looked freshly whitewashed, and so I was surprised to see that, between the pair of maples in the front yard, the stars and stripes of the American flag still waved from a small pole stuck in the lawn. I stayed in the car for a moment, with my heart pounding in my throat, trying to absorb the fact of finally being there, at the end of the road, about to see Rodney again, and after a few seconds I went up the porch steps and rang the bell. No one answered. Then I rang again, with the same result. A few metres from the door, to the right, there was a window that, as far as I remembered, looked into the living room where I had talked with Rodney's father, but I couldn't see inside the house through it because a pair of white curtains were drawn. I turned around. A 4 X 4 driven by an old man came round the corner, passed slowly in front of me and carried on towards town. I went down the porch steps and, while I lit a cigarette in the front yard, thought of knocking on the door of one of the neighbours' houses to ask after Rodney, but I discarded the idea after I noticed a woman in a housecoat scrutinizing me through a window on the other side of the street. I decided to go for a walk. I walked towards the tracks, beyond which the city seemed to disintegrate into a disorderly mix of vacant lots, tiny woods and cultivated fields, and then walked along parallel to them retracing the route I'd just travelled by car, and when I reached Bud's Bar again I saw they'd just opened: the door was still closed but there was a pick-up truck parked in front of it and, despite the vertical morning sun, illuminated ads for Miller Lite, Budweiser, Icehouse and Milwaukee Best shone feebly in the windows; above them was a big sign in support of the American soldiers fighting overseas: PRAY FOR PEACE. SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.

  I went in. The place was empty. I sat on a stool, in front of the bar, and waited for someone to come and serve me. Bud's was still the charmless small town bar I remembered, with its faint smell of stables and its pool tables and jukebox and television screens all over the place, and when I saw a sluggish guy appear through the swinging door, wearing a Red Sox baseball cap, I wanted to think it was the same waiter who, fifteen years before, had told me where Rodney's house was. The man made some comment that I didn't entirely understand (something about not being able to trust people who start drinking before breakfast), and then when he was behind the bar, a little dazzled by the glare of the sun that came in through the windows at my back, he asked me what I wanted to drink. I looked at his stony face, his slanting eyes, his boxer's nose and the few locks of greasy hair poking out from under his sweaty cap; not without a certain surprise I said to myself that it was indeed the same man, fifteen years older. I ordered a beer, he served it, leaned his slaughterman's hands on the bar and before I could interrogate him about Rodney he asked:

  'You're not from around here, are you?'

  'No,' I answered.

  'Can I ask where you're from?'

  I told him.

  'Shit,' he exclaimed. 'That's far away, huh?' He corrected himself: 'Well, not that far. Nowhere's that far away any more. Besides, you guys are in the war, aren't you?'

  'The war?'

  ' God almighty, where've you been for the last year, buddy? Iraq, Madrid, haven't you heard anything about that?'

  'Yes,' I said, after lighting a cigarette. 'I have heard something. But I'm not sure we're as much in the war as you guys.'

  The man blinked.

  'I don't understand,' he said.

  Luckily at that moment a girl with circles under her eyes and a shiny silver stud in her belly button suddenly rushed into the bar. Without even saying hello the man began to reproach her for something, but the girl told him to go to hell and disappeared through the swinging door; I wondered if the girl was his daughter.

  'Shit,' the owner said again, as if laughing at his own anger. 'These kids don't respect anyone any more. In our day things were different, don't you think?' And, as if the girl bursting into the bar had paradoxically improved the morning's outlook, the man added: 'Hey, would you mind if I joined you?'

  I didn't need to answer. While he got himself a beer I thought he must be fifty-five or sixty years old, more or less the same age as Rodney; mentally I repeated: 'Our day?' The bartender had a sip of beer and set the bottle down on the bar; smoothing his hair under his Red Sox cap, he asked:

  'What were we talking about?'

  'Nothing important,' I hurried to say. 'But I wanted to ask you a question.'

  'Fire away.'

  'I've come to Rantoul to see a friend,' I began. 'Rodney Falk. I just called at his house but no one answered. It's been a while since I lost track of him, so I don't even know if he's still . . .'

  I stopped talking: the bartender had calmly raised his hand and, making a screen to defend himself from the light, was examining me with interest.

  'Hey, I know you, don't I?' he finally said.

  'You know me, but you don't remember me,' I answered. 'I was here a long time ago.'

  The man nodded and lowered his hand; in a few seconds the happiness had drained from his face, to be replaced by an expression that wasn't mockery, but resembled it.

  'I'm afraid you've made the journey in vain,' he said.

  'Rodney doesn't live here any more?'

  'Rodney died four months ago,' he answered. 'Hung himself from a beam in his shed.'

  I was speechless; for a second I couldn't breathe. Stunned, I looked away from the bartender and, trying to find something to focus on behind the bar, I saw the photos of baseball stars and the big portrait of John Wayne hanging on the walls; in that decade and a half the baseball stars had changed, but not John Wayne: there he still was, legendary, imperturbable and dressed as a cowboy, with a dark red bandana knotted at his throat and an invincible smile in his eyes, like an abiding icon of the triumph of virtue. I put out my cigarette, took a sip of beer and suddenly had an icy feeling of dizziness, of unreality, as if I'd already lived through that moment or as if I were dreaming it: a solitary bar lost in the Midwest, the light pouring in through the windows and a lazy, talkative barman who, as if he were whispering a message in my ear that had no precise meaning but for me at that moment had all the meaning in the world, gave me the news of the death of a friend who I actually hardly knew and who, perhaps more than a friend, was a symbol whose scope not even I myself could entirely define, a dark or radiant symbol like maybe Hemingway had been for Rodney. And while I unthinkingly thought of Rodney and of Hemingway — of Rodney's suicide four months before in the shed of his house in Rantoul, Illinois, and of Hemingway's suicide in his house in Ketchum, Idaho, when Rodney was just a teenager — I thought also of Gabriel and Paula, or r
ather what happened is that they appeared to me, happy, luminous and dead, and then I felt an irrepressible desire to pray, to pray for Gabriel and for Paula and for Rodney, for Hemingway too, and at that very moment, as if a butterfly had just flown in through the open window of Bud's Bar, I suddenly remembered a prayer that appears in 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place', that desolate story by Hemingway I had read many times since I first read it that long ago night when Rodney's father called me in Urbana to tell me the story of his son, a prayer that I knew instantly was the only suitable prayer for Rodney because Hemingway had unknowingly written it for him many years before he died, a bleak prayer that Rodney had undoubtedly read as many times I had and that, I imagined for a second, maybe Rodney and Hemingway recited before taking their lives and that Paula and Gabriel wouldn't even have had time to pray: 'Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada.' Mentally I recited this prayer while I watched the bartender approach from the back of the bar, fat and grave, or maybe indifferent, drying his hands on a rag, as if he'd stepped away for a moment out of the pure necessity to do something or as if he too had been praying. For a moment I thought of leaving; then I thought I couldn't leave; stupidly I asked:

  'Did you know him?'

  'Rodney?' the bartender asked stupidly, leaning against the bar again.